As is well known, in recent years, digitalization of television broadcasting has been being promoted. For example, in Japan, not only broadcasting satellite (BS) digital broadcasting and 110-degree communication satellite (CS) digital broadcasting but also terrestrial digital broadcasting has been put to practical use.
Thus, television broadcasting reception apparatuses configured to receive such digital television broadcasting provide a function to selectively receive not only the current terrestrial analog broadcasting but also satellite digital broadcasting, and terrestrial digital broadcasting, and the like. Furthermore, these digital television broadcasting reception apparatuses also provide a network connection function.
The network connection function allows the digital television broadcasting reception apparatus to form a home network together with personal computer (PC) or a recording and reproduction apparatus. Then, based on control performed by PC, the digital television broadcasting reception apparatus can record received contents in the recording and reproduction apparatus and acquire contents from the recording and reproduction apparatus for reproduction.
Moreover, the digital television broadcasting reception apparatus with the network connection function includes a software keyboard function. The software keyboard function is such that a keyboard is displayed on a display screen so that on the displayed keyboard, characters can be input using a remote controller.
Such a software keyboard function provided in the digital television broadcasting reception apparatus provides a user with operation means other than a PC keyboard which allows characters to be input. Furthermore, the software keyboard function enables character input to be carried out on the normally viewed display screen, making the input operation more convenient.
However, such a software keyboard function is still in a development stage, and there is much room for development of the details of the function. In particular, with respect to an operation of inputting graphemes for Roman alphabetic characters, there has been almost no development for improvement of the convenience.
Japanese Patent No. 4181999 discloses a device for electronic apparatuses which is configured to allow texts to be input by operating keys in a numeric key block. In this device, operating an Alt key in the numeric key block allows a list of special characters (graphemes) to be shown on the display so that any desired character can be selected from the list and input.